Re-learning Learning

Through little fault of their own, students have come to believe that knowledge is something that they receive from teachers. Consider the following 7th grade student reflection on a recent animation project:

"I didn't like scratch all that much. If you messed up something and needed to go back and fix it, it would mess up the whole Scratch project. ... Also, if you had a question for Mr. Lavigne, he would be helping someone out so then you couldn't finish either." Somehow, this student has come to believe that: firstly, messing up is wrong and apparently disastrous. Secondly, the teacher is the person that fixes problems.

At first glance, this seems problematic and concerning to me as a teacher. However, continuing to read this reflection relieved some of my concerns: "At first, I thought Scratch was SO hard. I didn't think I was going to be able to do this Term 2 project. But, once I started on it, and learned new things about it, it got MUCH easier. It took less time to do things so I could get things done quicker."

This student, along with more than 200 others, used Scratch to animate and illustrate topics related to cyber-safety and digital citizenship. Initial reactions were often similar to that of the previous student:

"I think that Scratch is a cool program. I think that at first it was difficult, but the more we used it, it got easier. If I were to learn more about scratch [sic] I think that I would find someone who knew all about scratch and ask them to show me an example." - 6th grade student

"When I started this Scratch project [sic] I liked it even though I was having a little difficulty ... I think Scratch is very easy to learn, even if you don't know how to use computers. There are two things that I would do to learn more about Scratch. First, visit MIT. How cool would it be to meet the people who created this program." - 6th grade student

"I could learn more about scratch by ... going online at www.scratch.mit.edu. I could learn from this website because I could watch someone's and see how they did something that I didn't know. I have to admit that I got an idea how to use scratch from people's projects." - 6th grade student

Children understand how to learn; More importantly, they also understand their own individual learning preferences. Somehow, the U.S. education system has gotten in the way. Yes, some children will always be risk-averse. But our culture of everyone [succeeding] not failing has caused fear of failure to suppress natural learning instincts.

As teachers, one of our primary goals must be to get out of the way and allow learning to emerge even when the fear of failure arises.